


A Portrait of His Pilgrim Soul

by anotherwisdom



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Repression, this is a fic about Aziraphale's favorite hobby (repression)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-08-20 20:04:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20233612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherwisdom/pseuds/anotherwisdom
Summary: The year is 1918. Still reeling from his argument with Crowley and the gaping hole that it's left in his life after 56 years, Aziraphale decides that he needs a way to distract himself and move on, and commits himself to the development of A.Z. Fell & Co.'s fine reputation. And in the cutthroat literary market of the early twentieth century, what better way to do this than to throw himself into the literary world of Paris and immerse himself in the society of the Lost Generation? But things don't go exactly according to plan, and the unlikely friendship he forms with Zelda Fitzgerald turns out to be anything but a distraction from his troubles.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic happened because I saw this (https://yumbles.tumblr.com/post/185966375578/crowley-and-aziraphale-run-into-each-other-in) lovely work of art and started imagining how the situation it represents might have occurred. I also happened to be reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel Tender is the Night at the time, and now two months later, I'm making this product of my feverish imagination your problem.
> 
> The title is a reference to W.B. Yeats' poem "When You Are Old."
> 
> This work bears an extremely loose relationship to fact that can be described as "I picked some facts that I liked and made up the rest." So, for example, it is true that Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald moved to Paris in 1924, but I made up the fact that they knew Hemingway before that time. Tl;dr, don't take anything in this about "real people" too seriously; I took the basic outline of these people's lives and made them into my own characters.

“What do you _mean _there aren’t any more copies available? …_What? _The first edition can’t _possibly _have been only 150 copies. That’s absurd.” Aziraphale paused to rub the bridge of his nose in annoyance while the book merchant assured him over the phone that, yes, the first edition of James Joyce’s _Ulysses_ was in fact only 150 copies, and they’d done that on purpose to make it more valuable on the market, so they had, sir, and it was working quite well too.

“Well, who on earth got to distribute the original 150 copies, then?” he said, tersely. He had had more than one customer come through in the past couple of days asking him about the much-anticipated novel, and fool that he was, he had cheerily assured them he’d have plenty of first edition copies for them to buy. And now he’d have to tell them that they’d have to go somewhere else, or wait for the _second_ edition. Humiliating!

“Sylvia Beach, sir. Owner and proprietor of Shakespeare and Co. in Paris.” The man seemed relieved to have someone to displace the blame onto.

Aziraphale pursed his lips. “I see. Well, thank you anyways, Kinley.” And he hung up the phone.

Well, the gloves were certainly off now. Aziraphale bustled about his shop, putting his papers in order and looking for his hat. 150 copies of the first edition, _indeed!_ He would find out who this “Sylvia Beach” was, and he would be sure that she wouldn’t beat him to the distribution of the most anticipated novel of the year again, or he hadn’t been the proprietor of A.Z. Fell & Co. for more than a hundred years. He had a reputation to uphold, after all.

\--

The year was 1918 and this made his plan easier to execute than it might have been otherwise. He had kept to himself for the past sixty years or so, letting the latter half of the nineteenth century, for the most part, quietly pass him by. Crowley’s request, their argument, and the long silence between them had shaken him more than he would ever be prevailed upon to admit.

_“I’ve got plenty of people to fraternize with, angel. I don’t need you.” _

_“Well, the feeling is mutual! Obviously!” _

Aziraphale’s initial surge of moral outrage had carried him all of twenty feet before he’d felt an overwhelming temptation to turn around and confront Crowley again. What the hell did he mean, he had plenty of other people to fraternize with? That probably wasn’t even _true! _And if he had so many other _friends _just begging to _fraternize _with him, why didn’t he ask _them _for his damn suicide pill? But when he’d turned around, Crowley had already gone.

Fighting a feeling of swelling in his chest, Aziraphale turned with a huff and made his way back to his book shop. Several hours later, he was holding a book open but not reading it, anxiously toying with the edges of the pages and regretting most of his conduct from that afternoon. Crowley’s request was ridiculous, that was certain, but perhaps he hadn’t needed to react like that. Patience was a virtue, after all.

_I don’t need you. _

Recalling the words gave Aziraphale an unpleasant feeling of tightness in his chest. A very small voice inside him asked: _was that true? _To which reason responded that of course, _of course, _it was true! Crowley didn’t _need _him, just as Aziraphale didn’t _need _Crowley, either. They were an angel and a demon, who had established a secret but mutually beneficial _work _relationship to make both of their _work _lives a little more convenient. “I don’t even _like _him!” Aziraphale insisted to himself, out loud. “I _don’t!_”

But for all this, as the days passed after their argument, Aziraphale could not shake a sense of deep disturbance. By that time—1862—the incidences where he and Crowley met, not for business purposes, but simply to do something in the vein of having a bit of lunch or attending the opera, had been happening upwards of three times a month. When Aziraphale felt the occasional flicker of guilt about this, he told himself that it was just easier to do these kind of things with another person, after all. People just gave you such funny looks if you did things alone nowadays. It was mere utility. And even if he _did _enjoy Crowley’s company just a little bit, what did that have to do with his _job? _He enjoyed the company of some humans, certainly, and just as certainly not all of them were going to Heaven. Was it _wrong _to have some generosity of spirit with God’s creatures, regardless of their status in the eyes of Heaven?

But as the weeks unfolded after their argument, Crowley’s appearances at Aziraphale’s bookstore stopped cold—and from the start, his absence was a source of pain for Aziraphale that was both inexpressible in its depth and deeply shameful in its implications.

Things changed most decisively when, on returning to his shop one day, Aziraphale glanced at a calendar and recognized with a start that it had been a full year since he and Crowley had argued in St. James’ Park. A full year in which Crowley had not spoken to him once. Abruptly, Aziraphale turned and walked back out of the bookshop. He made his way briskly through the London streets, trying not to think about the implications of what he was doing, driven only by undeniable fact that he simply could _not _tolerate Crowley’s silence for any longer. After some time, he arrived at Crowley’s lodgings, rang the bell, and managed to successfully fend off thoughts about what, exactly, he was doing by concentrating very hard on the scuffs in his shoes. He looked up with a small start when the man he recognized as Crowley’s valet opened the door.

“Good morning, sir. How may I be of assistance?”

“Good morning. Is Mr. Crowley in?”

As shadow of confusion passed over the man’s face. “Ah,” he said. “I’m sorry, sir, but Mr. Crowley hasn’t lived here for some time. He vacated the premises several months ago.”

For the first time in a very long time, Aziraphale was sharply aware of eternity, stretching out not only before him, but on either side of him and behind him as far as he could see or know.

“Ah! Quite. How silly of me not to have known,” he replied, brightly. “I don’t suppose you have any idea where he’s gone?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“I see. Thank you, and good morning.”

“Sir.”

\--

And thus began Aziraphale’s days of a terrible colorlessness unlike he’d ever known before. He had never taken much interest in sleeping, but he took up the habit with relish now, often spending only about five hours of his day awake. The bookshop would, for weeks at a time, fall into disorganization, until he vaguely registered the disorder and performed a miracle to bring it back to a passable state. He had once liked living like a human, reorganizing and cataloguing things every day, dusting the shelves, and hunting for old and desirable editions across London. But now all of that simply made him tired. He would open his eyes to a feeling of wanting to be anyone, anything, anywhere else, and think about the days when he had cared so deeply about the reputation of A.Z. Fell & Co., and he would laugh. What was the bookshop, after all? Just his _silly little hobby_, meaningless in the larger scheme of things, and what he had actually been sent to Earth to do. He felt, sourly, that he had been very _silly _about most of his conduct on Earth. Often this feeling would well up in his chest in great waves of self-disgust. And then he would roll over and go back to sleep.

If most of his days were flat in this manner, they were punctuated occasionally by horribly long nights of extreme emotional turbulence. He would lie awake for hours, staring at the ceiling with glassy eyes and murmuring to himself, left hand shakily and repeatedly twisting the rings on his right.

“I am an angel, and it is natural that I should feel compassion and an impulse for mercy towards all of God’s creatures. Certainly that’s what this is, certainly. I’m simply disappointed that Crowley, in denying his connection with me, has lost a potential path to salvation. That’s what it is. That’s all. And even if I did like him personally, what of that, after all? There’s nothing wrong with that. Certainly the Almighty must see my extension of the hand of friendship as a gesture of generosity and mercy. Love and forgiveness, after all, _must _be prior to all other divine prerogatives. Love in the sense of infinite capacity for generosity of spirit, that is. Not in the—the other way.”

This soliloquy with all its rationalizations would be followed by a moment of peace lasting no more than a handful of seconds. Nothing that Aziraphale said to himself, for years upon years, had any power to diminish the ghostly doubts that had accumulated in his heart like guests that had overstayed their welcome. Doubt that the divine prioritized mercy and forgiveness where demons were concerned. Doubt that the connection that he had formed with Crowley, and whatever these feelings were that were now laying him so low, were things that could themselves be looked on with any kind of mercy and forgiveness. And most terrifying of all, doubt that his feelings for Crowley were contained within an upper limit of “compassion,” “mercy,” and “friendship.” Although these doubts and his abject terror at their implications ate away at him on the inside, Aziraphale absolutely _refused _to face them. Call him a coward, but he simply _could not. _He would not give a name to this terrifying thing that had grown inside of him. The only thing that he would do was try his absolute best to crush it out of existence.

For what, exactly, was the alternative? He had no idea where Crowley had gone. Finding him was possible in theory, but in moments where Aziraphale permitted himself to think this far, he always gave a sharp, humorless little laugh. What, was he going to crawl to Crowley, in this state, and _beg _him to come back to London, so they could start _attending the opera _together again?

“You’re ridiculous,” he murmured to himself, contemptuously. There was simply no possibility at all that Crowley felt anything resembling this strange attachment for Aziraphale. None at all. He had no idea where Crowley was, or what he was doing, but of one thing he was absolutely certain: the demon was _not, _like Aziraphale, wallowing in his bed, languishing in uncontrollable melancholy over the loss of Aziraphale’s society. Dwelling on this without fail made Aziraphale feel pathetic and very, very small, but he forced himself to think about it for hours at a time, driving it home to his heart with the ruthlessness of a nail into flesh. He would permit himself no illusions. He didn’t believe, as some angels claimed, that demons were incapable of any kind of feeling of friendship, but he was certain that Crowley had too many other _interests_, other _considerations,_ other _ideas_ occupying him to spare even a second thought for the angel. As he had said himself: he did not need Aziraphale.

And so the years passed, marching one after the other, blurring into each other as they went.

\--

But things could not carry on this way forever. Bit by bit, Aziraphale emerged from the crushing weight that had been pinning him down. He began, after several strongly worded notes, to report to his head office with some sort of regularity again. Once he had managed to complete this task a few times, others did not seem as daunting. Organizing the bookshop himself rather than depending on miracles became less exhausting. He began to be able to read through the night again without being derailed by obsessive, doubt-fueled spirals of thought. The pain was still there, of course, and it reared its ugly head with force on some occasions. But by the 1880s Aziraphale found that he could even manage to enjoy dancing lessons for several hours at a time. He even took a renewed interest in collecting books, taking small steps to reestablish the fine reputation that A.Z. Fell & Co. had enjoyed in the 40s and 50s.

And so we find Aziraphale where we left him, in the year 1918, fretting over what to say to customers who came in asking after the new Joyce novel.

He was indignant. This was not to be endured.

After investigating further, Aziraphale found that Sylvia Beach had gotten access to the first editions of Joyce’s novel because—of all reasons!—they were _friends. _And if that was how the game was being played these days, then Aziraphale resolved to play it better than anyone. It was suddenly very convenient that he’d been rather quiet for the past sixty years or so, because it meant that there would be no one who knew him well enough to remember that he had been the proprietor of A.Z. Fell & Co. for much longer than they all could reasonably have expected him to have lived. Now all that remained was to become the absolute best of friends with the celebrated authors of the hour. It couldn’t be that hard.

“After all, I’m very _friendly,_” he murmured to himself, reasonably.

And in the event, it was not too much of a challenge. Luckily for him most of the authors in question were residents of Paris; thank Heaven, he could take the opportunity to enjoy his favorite crepes and didn’t have to live in some dreadful place like New York or—_Heaven forbid—_Los Angeles. After spending enough time at the left bank of the Seine, with occasional excursions to the Côte d’Azur if he was feeling particularly brave, the work practically did itself. Though the Anglophone expatriate crowd represented a great variety of character, Aziraphale found that they all shared a subdued but constant stirring of desperation. Their world was collapsing around them; in the values that their parents and grandparents had cherished as unquestionable they could find no power to explain the shattered, cruel, and unjust world as they experienced it. And it was this feeling that all of them shared, in a strange way, that made it so easy for Aziraphale to become an important part of their lives. They were, one and all, attracted as if magnetically to the warm stability of Aziraphale’s presence. His perceived age reminded them of an assortment of parents without all of the sticky baggage that attended those actual relationships, and to them he seemed to have an almost magical degree of charm and goodwill keeping him aloof from the troubles that wracked their own lives. One by one they came to him, poured out their hearts, and left comforted by his sheer generosity of spirit as much as by the reassurance and the good advice that he offered them.

Aziraphale came to enjoy this life, in a quiet, warm sort of way. He was deeply gratified by his apparent ability to give these lost humans at least some form of the guidance that they all so desperately craved; furthermore, it proved the most robust distraction yet from the turbulence of his own spiritual affairs. The ache was still there, certainly, but it was dulled. The human companionship, fleeting though he knew it would inevitably be, distracted him from Crowley’s absence. And this kind of work—taking friends into his confidence, listening to their doubts, worries, anguish, and fears, and soothing them as best he could—this, thought Aziraphale, was certainly God’s work. It was in the moments after any of these young people tearfully thanked him that Aziraphale felt the most secure against the doubts that had settled in his heart. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Aziraphale finds unlikely companionship in Zelda Fitzgerald, but encounters a new challenge to his ongoing project of forgetting Crowley. 
> 
> Other points of interest include: Ernest Hemingway failing to recognize Aziraphale's status as the first gay man on Earth.

In 1924, Paris was suddenly abuzz with the news that the famous American author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, had taken a house on the left bank of the Seine. Aziraphale was pleased to hear this. He had quite liked _This Side of Paradise _and _The Beautiful and the Damned, _and he was very interested to meet Fitzgerald—Scott, as his friends called him. Ernest Hemingway, with whom Aziraphale was familiar, agreed to introduce him.

“I’ve got to warn you, though,” said Hemingway, in the cab that was taking him and Aziraphale to the party where they were to meet the Fitzgeralds. “Zelda’s a bit of a handful.”

Aziraphale glanced over at him, his eyebrows drawn together quizzically. “Zelda?”

“Scott’s wife.”

“What do you mean, a handful?”

“Hm.” Ernest paused to take a drag of his cigarette, blowing the smoke out of the cab’s open window. “Well, she’s lovely and all, but the fact of the matter is, Mr. Fell, she’s just a little crazy, and that’s all there is to say on the matter. Jealous of Scott’s success, really. He loves her like anything, though. Won’t listen to any kind of reason about her.” Hemingway looked at him meaningfully as if expecting Aziraphale to commiserate with him on this supposed tragedy of Scott’s marriage to a woman who was a “handful.” Aziraphale refused to return the meaning in the glance, instead pursing his lips and looking out his own window.

“Well, I suppose I’ll have to see when I meet her, won’t I?” he said, rather coolly.

Ernest snorted, shaking his head and taking another drag from his cigarette.

“You’ll see.”

When they arrived at the party, Aziraphale followed Ernest through the crowd until they found Fitzgerald.

“Scott, I’d like you to meet Mr. Albert Zachary Fell, proprietor of A.Z. Fell & Co. in London.”

“And a great admirer of your work, I might add,” said Aziraphale, beaming.

“You flatter me,” said Scott, smiling warmly as he extended his hand to shake Aziraphale’s. “How do you do, Mr. Fell?”

“Excellently,” said Aziraphale, his voice buoyant with enthusiasm. “I am indeed looking forward to this party. I know you haven’t been in Paris long, Mr. Fitzgerald, but I can assure that Ms. Barney’s little soirées are simply—”

“Scott,” interrupted a voice. It belonged to a woman with a round face and bobbed dark curls who had appeared suddenly at Scott’s side. “Come and help me order a drink, darling. I’ve quite forgotten the French word for whiskey.” She was unsmiling, and she didn’t seem to take any notice of Aziraphale and Ernest.

“One moment, dear, Ernest as just introducing me to Mr. Fell here. He owns A.Z. Fell & Co. The bookstore in London? You must have heard of it.”

“Ah, yes,” she said, vaguely, looking at Aziraphale without interest. Scott gave an apologetic glance.

“Mr. Fell, this is my wife, Zelda.”

“Pleased to meet you,” she said, finally smiling as she shook Aziraphale’s hand, although it didn’t seem to reach her eyes.

“I’m charmed, Ms. Fitzgerald,” said Aziraphale, with the sunniest smile that he could muster. She seemed unmoved by it—in fact, if anything, her aspect grew even colder. She turned to Hemingway.

“Ernest,” she said, curtly.

“Miss Zelda,” he said, in a tone like poisonous honey. “Lovely to see you, as always.”

Throughout the evening, as Aziraphale circulated about the party, he found himself taking particular interest in Zelda. The cold demeanor with which she had greeted Aziraphale and Ernest faded as the alcohol began to flow. She became a brilliant guest—charming, hilarious, and seemingly always in the right place at the right time. She pushed people to let loose, and cheered them if they seemed to be wavering. And yet, Aziraphale could not shake the impression that she was performing this task of facilitating the party with what could only be described as a grim efficiency. He wondered if anything was troubling her.

At one point in the evening, Aziraphale happened to spot her at a rare moment of rest, sitting alone on a couch and nursing a drink. He hurried over and sat down next to her.

“Hello, Zelda,” he said, brightly. He looked away to feel in his jacket pocket for his cigarette case. “Lovely party, isn’t it?” Finding his case, he opened it and turned back to proffer it to her. “Would you like a—?” He stopped, surprised by the hostility of the gaze that he met when he found her eyes again.

“That’s Ms. Fitzgerald, to you,” she said. “And I’d thank you not to get too familiar.”

With a start, Aziraphale realized that he had probably given the accidental impression of propositioning her, or at least planning to. “Oh, my sincerest apologies, Ms.—”

But she had already gotten up and walked away, without another word.

\--

At around 2 in the morning, the party got to the point of wildness that surpassed Aziraphale’s interest, and so he made his excuses and departed. Once outside, he took a deep breath of the cool night air and sighed with pleasure. He decided that he would walk home. But he had no sooner rounded the corner of the building to cut through the narrow street right next to it that he nearly ran straight into Zelda Fitzgerald.

“Oh!” he cried, stumbling back slightly. She stumbled backwards as well, nearly falling over before Aziraphale grabbed her by the arm. Her skin was clammy, and she seemed pale in the dim glow of the streetlights. She looked up at Aziraphale blearily, her eyes glassy and unfocused.

“Ms. Fitzgerald,” he said, trying and failing to catch her wandering gaze. “Are you quite all right? What are you doing out here? Shall I—”

But before he could say any more, Zelda pitched forward and vomited, a tidy amount of which landed squarely on Aziraphale’s coat.

“Oh dear,” he said, anxiously, as she doubled over and continued to vomit. Short though her hair was, Aziraphale attempted to gather it back from her face. “There, now,” he said, awkwardly, wondering if she could hear him over her retching. “Best to get it all out then, isn’t it? It’s quite all right, my dear. It happens to the best of us, really.” It had never happened to _him, _but he had a cheating mechanism, after all.

When it was over, she straightened up and then reeled slightly. Aziraphale caught her, draping her arm over his shoulder so that she could lean on him.

“Have to find Scott,” she slurred, vaguely.

“Yes, of course, my dear. We’ll find him. Just lean on me. That’s it.”

It was only as he was leaving the party for the second time that he realized he had forgotten to miraculously remove Zelda’s vomit from his jacket before re-entering the party. “Oh, bother,” he murmured to himself. He had meant to save her the embarrassment.

\--

The next afternoon, Aziraphale was drinking coffee and reading in his small Paris apartment when Zelda rang his bell.

“Hello, Mr. Fell,” she said, when he opened the door. She was wearing a long-sleeved, loose-fitting black dress with a matching felt hat. “May I come in?” Her gaze was steady, and somewhat difficult to read, but Aziraphale thought, at least, that it was a little warmer than it had been the previous evening.

“Certainly,” he said, with a smile. “Do sit down, my dear. Would you like some coffee?”

“Yes, please,” she replied. Then, while Aziraphale was pouring her cup, she continued. “I’ll cut to the chase, Mr. Fell. I’ve come to thank you and apologize. I’m sorry, for being so short with you last night and for soiling what seemed like quite a lovely coat. And thanks, for caring for me and bringing me inside. Heaven knows what might have happened if you hadn’t come along.”

Aziraphale handed her the cup of coffee. “Oh, it was no trouble at all, my dear,” he said. “And I daresay that you would have been fine without me. You were right outside the house, after all.”

“What excellent manners you have, Mr. Fell! Lying to a lady to preserve her feelings.” And for the first time, she smiled at him. Aziraphale beamed back at her, gratified in the extreme.

“Well, I’ve got a lot to prove after last night’s terrific blunder, haven’t I?” he said. “I’m very sorry for having made you uncomfortable, Ms. Fitzgerald. Believe me when I tell you that was the furthest object from my intentions.”

She waved a hand at him. “Oh, forget that,” she said, dismissively. “It’s just that men usually want something from you. Especially the older ones. So it helps to keep them at arm’s length by default. But a gentleman of that ilk, I am sure, would have run in the other direction when I puked on his fine dinner coat.”

Aziraphale laughed. Her frankness was marvelous. He reached for his cigarette case and offered one to her; this time, she did not refuse.

\--

After this, Aziraphale and Zelda found themselves spending a great deal of time together. It all began with Aziraphale taking Zelda to see Paris’s lesser-known art museums, from which experience they learned they had many interests—food, art, opera—in common. Scott was working on a manuscript and as such spent long hours alone on his work, and so Zelda and Aziraphale had much free time to fill with each other. Together they made the rounds of all the finest museums and restaurants in Paris. One evening, they even went dancing together.

“Can you dance, Mr. Fell?” she’d asked that afternoon, over the cup of tea Aziraphale had given her.

“Oh, yes,” he said, enthusiastically. “I don’t like to brag, but I’m, ah—_quite_ skilled at the gavotte, if I do say so myself.” He paused, taking a modest sip of tea to tastefully conceal that he was glowing with pride. But Zelda’s silence extended for a beat too long, and he looked up to see that she was looking away from him, pressing her lips together firmly to suppress a smile.

“What is it?” he asked, confusedly. His genuine misunderstanding sent her over the edge, and she burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny, then?” Aziraphale asked, his pride wounded.

“Ah, Mr. Fell, no one’s done the gavotte since before _I_ was born, surely,” she said, looking at him with fond amusement.

“_Really_?” he said, dismayed. He had last done it—and had a lovely time with it, too—in 1889. It had only been thirty-five years. “How odd. These trends _do _move rather quickly, don’t they?”

Zelda quickly took a sip of her drink to suppress another bout of hilarity. “Well, at any rate, the contemporary dance of the hour is called the Charleston. And I’m taking you out to learn it, tonight. Consider yourself lucky you get to learn it from an American. I’m the genuine article.”

Aziraphale found himself very happy with this arrangement with Zelda, more so than he’d been in a long time. He’d never gotten along so well with a human. In the back of his mind, a voice whispered that the reason why they got along so well was because Zelda, with her dry wit and her cold exterior housing a warm heart, reminded him very much of Crowley. But this voice was very easy to ignore because, after all, she was _not _Crowley, he thought, triumphantly. And there were no rules in heaven against forming friendship with humans, were there? No indeed, there were not.

“I say, Mr. Fell,” said Hemingway, one evening, when this had been going on for some time. “You and Zelda have been seeing an awful lot of each other lately.” He was looking at Aziraphale with a strange expression, like he was doing something that Ernest never would have expected, but which he found rather impressive.

Aziraphale glanced up from his book. “Yes,” he said, confusedly. “She’s quite a lovely girl. I have to say, Ernest, I entirely disagree with what you told her about me on the night you introduced me to Scott. Zelda’s a bit melancholy, perhaps, but I certainly would not describe her as _a handful._”

“Hm,” said Ernest, still looking at Aziraphale with that strange expression. Then he sighed and adjusted himself in his seat. “Well, Mr. Fell, I never would have thought you had it in you, but at any rate you might want to be a bit more subtle. I don’t think that Scott has caught on yet, but—”

“My _dear _boy,” said Aziraphale, severely, cutting him off as soon as he realized what Ernest was implying. “I’m afraid that you’ve got entirely the wrong idea.”

“Oh,” said Ernest, slightly embarrassed. “Well. You _do _spend an awful lot of time with her. Seems rather silly to me, if you two aren’t—if she’s not—”

“If she’s not _what, _exactly, Ernest?” said Aziraphale, in a tone that had gone from severe to cold.

Ernest said nothing, merely raising his eyebrows and turning back to his newspaper.

Odd though this conversation with Ernest was, it revealed to Aziraphale another way in which Zelda’s similarity to Crowley was reassuring. He liked Zelda, certainly, and he enjoyed the time that he spent with her, but he certainly didn’t—didn’t _love _her, in the sense of the term played out in the effluence of sobs and sighs of melancholy and pleasure and yearning appearing from tip to toe in humanity’s protracted drama. Ernest had thought he felt this way about Zelda, but Aziraphale had known immediately and without doubt that he was wrong. That meant, logically, Aziraphale said to himself, that the affinity he’d had for spending time with Crowley before their argument was the same as that he now felt for Zelda. It must _surely_ fall in the same, extremely safe and non-blasphemous category. Surely.

\--

Scott, indeed, did not seem perturbed by Aziraphale and Zelda’s growing friendship. He and Aziraphale liked each other in their own right, and he was more discerning than Ernest, apparently able to tell that Aziraphale was not going to demand of Zelda more than she was willing to give. Furthermore, he and Zelda gave the impression of being very happy together. Scott seemed like a distinctively caring husband, attending to Zelda’s needs assiduously. He often made her laugh, and Aziraphale sometimes caught him looking at her fondly while she was occupied with something else. It made his heart warm.

But as time passed, Aziraphale came to realize that this warm exterior was only one side of a configuration that was much less stable. He began to see snatches of turbulence, here and there; often in the form of snapping at each other at parties, or hearing muffled angry tones inside their apartment when he arrived to visit with them or to take Zelda somewhere. But he didn’t know the extent of it until one evening when he dined with the Fitzgeralds, alone in their home.

The evening went more or less as expected at first, and they all drank rather liberally.

“I say, Scott,” said Aziraphale, conversationally. “How’s the manuscript coming? You know, the one about the fellow who throws all the big parties, hoping the girl will come to them.”

There was a sudden silence, and Aziraphale looked up, perturbed. He saw that Scott’s aspect had darkened significantly, and that he was looking rather pointedly at Zelda, while she stared fixedly at her plate.

“How is my manuscript going indeed, Zelda? How would you say?” said Scott. His tone dripped with acidic sarcasm.

“Please, Scott,” Zelda replied, quietly.

Aziraphale attempted to interrupt. “My dear fellow, I—”

“Tell Mr. Fell how my manuscript is going, darling,” persisted Scott, interrupting him. Aziraphale involuntarily shrank in his chair at the mention of his own name. He had never heard Scott speak so terribly before. Zelda set her jaw in resignation.

“We’ve run out of money,” she said, looking up at Aziraphale. “And so Scott has had to stop work on his manuscript to write a story for _The Saturday Evening Post._” Her tone was calm and flat. Her eyes seemed strangely vacant, like she had withdrawn into herself.

“Ah, I think that you mean to say,” said Scott, with horribly false joviality, “that _you’ve _burned through all of our money, without doing anything _useful _around here, and now _I _have to whore myself out to some trashy magazine so that we can maintain basic decency in our standards of living. Isn’t that right, dearest? My sweet?”

“Scott!” gasped Aziraphale. He was shocked and appalled. He had never seen Scott behave this way before. And not three minutes ago they had all been laughing about some faux pas of James Joyce’s that they’d all witnessed the other night.

Zelda’s lower lip began to tremble, but she bit down on it firmly. “Stop making a scene, Scott,” she said, with cold derision. “This is pathetic.”

“Pathetic? _I’m _pathetic? Look at yourself! You—”

But suddenly Zelda had thrown her glass of wine in his face. He choked and sputtered.

“Shut up! Just _shut up, _you miserable drunk! Maybe if you had more _talent _you wouldn’t spend so much time inebriated to escape your woes and actually _finish _your manuscripts before we ran out of money!”

Scott stood up suddenly and took two paces towards Zelda, towering over her with livid eyes. For a moment Aziraphale feared the worst and was prepared to do the worst in response. But then he turned away abruptly, and walked out of the dining room into the kitchen. After a moment, Zelda let out a choked sob, then stood up and ran after him. Aziraphale waited for a moment and then, entirely unsure of what else to do, began to gather his things to leave. As he was slipping out the door, he heard Zelda crying. It was muffled, and Aziraphale imagined that her face was probably pressed into Scott’s chest.

“I’m sorry,” came her voice, incoherent and subdued. “I’m so sorry, my love.”

“Shhhh, Zelda,” Scott responded. All of the venom had gone out of his voice, but its tenderness was sour to Aziraphale after what he had just witnessed. “I’m sorry too. I don’t know why I say these things. I don’t know what comes into me.”

Aziraphale stood still for a moment, hovering over the threshold. Then he set his hat on his head and walked out into the darkness.

\--

“Well, the cat’s out of the bag now, isn’t it, Mr. Fell?” Zelda said, drily. It was the morning after the ill-fated dinner; Scott had gone out and Zelda had rung up Aziraphale, who was now sitting in her apartment, twisting the rings on his fingers. “We’re not the all-American couple we make ourselves out to be, I suppose.”

Aziraphale was perturbed by her resigned attitude toward the issue. “Well, how often does that sort of thing happen, my dear?”

Zelda threw herself down into an armchair with a huff. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to,” she snapped.

Aziraphale looked at her sharply. “Zelda,” he said, in a tone to show that in that moment he was lacking in patience with nonsense. She continued to look at him moodily for a few seconds, her eyebrows drawn together and her tongue pressed into the side of her cheek, before she sighed and relented.

“I don’t know,” she said, dully. “On and off for years. Only when he’s been drinking, or we’ve both been. Yes, _yes, _I know,” she said, waving the comment that Aziraphale opened his mouth to make away with her hand. “I know what you’re going to say and I _know _that that’s quite often, probably more than it should be.”

Aziraphale sighed. _Years?_ Zelda’s curious melancholy was coming into focus for him. He was now more perturbed by Scott’s ability to maintain such an apparently sunny disposition in public. “Well, I mean, if it’s been _years_…not to jump too immediately to conclusions, my dear, but are you quite sure that you and Scott should, ah, be together? The laws about these things are becoming quite progressive nowadays, I’ve heard, especially in America.”

She turned to head to look at him. Her eyes were steely. “Yes,” she said, with robust finality. “I’m _sure _that we must stay together. I love him.”

Aziraphale’s heart skipped a beat and he bit his lip. “Well, Zelda. He loves you too, I know that. But these things are about more than love, my dear, aren’t they?”

She continued to look back at him hard, her expression of determination unwavering. “Do you believe in God, Mr. Fell?”

He blinked, taken aback by the question. “Yes, I suppose I must do,” he said.

“Well, I don’t. I’ve turned to Him repeatedly throughout my life, and He’s never been there for me. Not even when I’ve needed Him the most. Not even when I said to him, ‘God, if I must face this, then part of me must come away in the process. I will never be the same again. And I don’t need you to stop it. But it certainly would make it easier to know that you were there.’ Even then, there was nothing but silence.”

Aziraphale himself could respond only with silence, looking down at his hands. He couldn’t very well tell her that God was just as silent towards beings who could be certain of Her existence and had been doing Her work (more or less) for nearly six thousand years. She wouldn’t believe him, and it would hardly be comforting. Meanwhile, Zelda had stood up and crossed the room, and was now running her fingers over the spines of her books. Identifying the one that she needed, she pulled it off the shelf.

“But this, Mr. Fell,” she said, flipping through the pages, “is what I _do _believe in. You’re familiar with John Donne?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Aziraphale. “I—” And he cut himself off just in time before saying _knew him quite well. _“…Have studied him extensively,” he finished, lamely. Zelda looked at him oddly and Aziraphale struggled to hold her gaze. Avoiding this kind of thing around humans was usually second-nature. He was becoming quite comfortable with Zelda Fitzgerald, indeed.

Apparently deciding not to question his unusual tone, she continued, “Well, then, I’m certain you’ll know this stanza of ‘The Canonization.’” And she read aloud:

_We can die by it, if not live by love, _

_And if unfit for tombs and hearse _

_Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; _

_And if no piece of chronicle we prove, _

_We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms; _

_And well a well-wrought urn becomes _

_The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs, _

_And by these hymns, all shall approve _

_Us canonized for Love. _

As he listened to her, Aziraphale’s chest grew tight.

“I don’t believe in God, Mr. Fell,” she said, closing the book. “But I do believe in the holiness of love. I know that loving Scott is the closest that I’ve ever been or ever will be to seeing the face of God. And I can’t give that up. Because then I’ll have nothing.”

Aziraphale found himself unable to speak. He had seen the face of God—a long, long time ago—but it was another face entirely that Zelda’s declaration had made him think of. And suddenly all he could think of was the harsh words he had thrown at Crowley in 1862, and how he might now never get an opportunity to take them back. Zelda said that she and Scott had been fighting for years. How many times had she sobbed into Scott’s chest, begging him to forgive her, like Aziraphale had heard her do last night? His chest suddenly burned with jealousy. She took for granted a luxury that Aziraphale would never be able to afford.

And then, with a start, Aziraphale realized the line of thought that he had fallen into, and didn’t like the implications of it _at all. _

“Mr. Fell?”

He glanced up. Zelda was leaning down, trying to meet his eyes. The steeliness of her gaze had gone, replaced with concern.

“Are you all right?”

“Y-Yes,” he said, trying his best to smile at her. “Yes, my dear, I’m fine.” And he went back to twisting his rings.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Aziraphale tags along with his friends on a short trip to Berlin, and has an unexpected run-in with his past.

It was June of 1929, and Aziraphale was in Berlin, accompanying the Fitzgeralds and Hemingway for a short trip. More specifically, at that moment, the four of them were in a nightclub called The Lady Windermere. Scott and Zelda had disappeared to dance. Aziraphale, meanwhile, was sitting forward in his chair, martini in one hand and lit cigarette in the other, having a conversation with Ernest Hemingway about purple prose. It was getting more heated by the minute.

“Look, all I’m _saying_—oh dear,” said Aziraphale, blinking. He’d gestured with his hands to emphasize his point and unwittingly spilled half of his drink onto the table. How many had he had again? No matter. He had been making a point. “All I’m _saying,_” he continued, earnestly, “is that a little _elaborate diction _never hurt anyone. Not if it’s—if it’s, _elegant, _and _well-chosen, _and—and—_beautiful._”

Ernest was leaning forward towards Aziraphale with both of his elbows resting on the table. He huffed at this declaration, taking a drag of his own cigarette.

“Well, all _I’m _saying,” he said, slurring nearly as much as Aziraphale, “is that I sure have never read someone like—someone like—_Pope_—and been able to think he was doing anything but wasting my time. Cut to the chase, is what I say. Get it out. Get it over with. We’ve all got things to do. Respect your reader’s time!” And he slammed his hand onto the table, making Aziraphale jump slightly.

“Ah, don’t do that, Ernest,” came Scott’s voice, and Aziraphale looked over to see that he and Zelda had returned from dancing. “You’ll give poor Mr. Fell a heart attack.”

“Indeed,” said Aziraphale, casting Ernest a dark look. Ernest merely rolled his eyes and finished his drink.

“Mr. Fell, dear,” said Zelda, touching his arm. “Do come with me to get another drink, since it looks like you’ve spilled yours all over the table.”

Aziraphale agreed, putting out his cigarette before standing up unsteadily. He followed Zelda through the crowded club towards the bar. Walking behind her, he gazed at the back of her head with a bittersweet mixture of fondness and melancholy. It had been nearly five years since they’d met now, and for all of that time she’d been the most steadfast of companions. But as time wore on, Aziraphale could no longer ignore that allowing her to become so close to him had been a rather grave mistake. Or, not a mistake—he didn’t like to think of her in such terms—but rather, a situation from which extracting himself would be rather painful and difficult. He would have to slowly disappear from her life. Quickly disappearing would never do—she would definitely come after him, appearing in his bookstore in London to tell him off for being such an ass and leaving without notice. No, it would have to be drawn out—a years-long process of turning down her invitations, avoiding her, and spending steadily more and more time away from her until she simply forgot about him altogether. If he did it right, one day she might say to someone or other, “What ever happened to Mr. Fell?” But by then he would be long gone, and no one would be able to tell her.

They had arrived at the bar.

“One gin and tonic please. And—” Zelda glanced at Aziraphale.

“A martini,” he said, thickly, leaning heavily on the bar. He could hear his own breathing, rather loudly.

The bartender said something, but Aziraphale hardly heard him, turning around to lean with his back against the bar and both of his elbows resting on it. Making his corporeal body intoxicated often made him like this. He tended to withdraw into his own mind to wander at his own glittering pace, and finding it unusually hard to keep up with the rapid-fire speed of the human world when called upon to do so. With Crowley, it had always seemed to be the opposite—drinking had made him fast, energetic, effusive. It flushed his cheeks and, sometimes, made him lose his grip on his eyes, so that their yellow tint expanded beyond the shape of human irises. Aziraphale smiled to himself, his own eyelids drifting low. Crowley had always hid his eyes, for utility, obviously, but also, Aziraphale thought, because he had been rather insecure about them. But Aziraphale liked them.

“I never told him that,” he murmured, to no one in particular. He had never told Crowley how much he liked his eyes, but he did—so he did. They had been like—like seeing the lanterns on either side of the doors of the bookshop in the darkness, when he was coming back to it after he had been away for a long time. Glowing with the warm, safe feeling of home.

“Mr. Fell?” Zelda’s voice seemed to come to him from a distance. He blinked and looked at her.

“’M sorry, my dear, did you say something?”

“I was just asking you if _you _said something,” she said, irritably, “but I’ve got to go to the bathroom. Get our drinks for us when they’re done, will you?” And she disappeared into the crowd. Aziraphale’s gaze lingered on the point of the crowd that she’d ducked into. Withdrawing from her life was necessary. She couldn’t see him remain the same while she grew old and died—it was out of the question. But he couldn’t stop thinking about how, in the meantime, as he distanced himself from her, she would think he was throwing her over. And it was going to be painful for the both of them. And furthermore, after Aziraphale extracted himself from her life and left her to finish her journey without him, he would be all alone again. And he tried his best not to think about that. He ran a hand over his face.

_What a fool I’ve been. _She was going to be hurt, and it wasn’t going to be fair to her, and he never would have let himself get so close to her in the first place if he hadn’t been so badly missing the company of someone else. _What a fool._

Such were the thoughts that occupied his mind when the bartender shouted over the noise, “I’ve got a gin and tonic and a martini here!”

Brought back down—or rather up—to the speed of human life, Aziraphale took he and Zelda’s drinks. Then he turned around to return to their table and jumped back with a cry, nearly falling over backwards, as he came face to face with Crowley. 

Unlike Aziraphale, who had lightly rouged his cheeks and colored his lips for the occasion of this excursion, Crowley wore no makeup on the lower half of his face, but his eyes were elaborately decorated: shadowed, adorned with liner, and embellished with mascara. Probably to show off this careful work, he wore no sunglasses, and his yellow eyes—those eyes!—appeared to glow gently in the darkness of the club. Over a sleeveless black shirt, he wore a black shawl of sheer fabric, patterned all over with flowers of silver thread. His pants were high-waisted, loose, and billowy in the fashion that had become popular with women at that time, and he wore black stockings with low heeled shoes of black patent leather.

“C—Crowley! My dear fellow,” gasped Aziraphale, with an attempt at a tone of hearty self-confidence that was the opposite of the multiple forms of panic ripping through him. “I say, it _has _been a long time. What, ah—what brings you to Berlin?”

He abhorred himself in that moment for the forced casualness of his words and their strange sense of distance, belying the 5,862 years they had known each other before this most recent and cold bout of silence. Did they still know each other better than anyone in the world? Could they? Aziraphale quickly realized that he could absolutely _not _be this drunk, not now. He quickly sobered up, causing the alcohol in his system to be deposited in the pot of a nearby plant. Everything in the club was suddenly sharp, loud, and in focus. Especially Crowley, who was standing in front of him, tall and willowy, bare eyes wide with shock as he gazed into Aziraphale’s. Crowley. _Crowley._

“Aziraphale,” he said, the uncertainty of his tone matching that of his eyes. He seemed—nervous? “Just, ah, you know, passing through,” he said, gesturing vaguely with his free hand.

Both of them were saved from further attempt to speak to each other across sixty years’ silence by the appearance of Zelda, who announced her presence by appearing at Aziraphale’s side and taking her gin and tonic out of his hand.

“Thanks for this, Mr. Fell,” she said. Then, noticing the look on his face, she glanced over and identified that he was looking at Crowley. “Ah—who’s this?” she asked, looking back and forth between the two of them.

“Zelda,” Aziraphale said, talking rather more loudly than the situation warranted. He cleared his throat. He wished that he wasn’t holding a martini so that he could twist the rings on his fingers as he spoke. “This is my—my old friend, Crowley. We’ve known each other a rather long time—his father was in fact an intimate friend of my father, the senior _Albert Zachary Fell_,” he said, making pointed eye contact with Crowley. Crowley’s eyes flicked slightly, and Aziraphale knew immediately that he had registered that this was the name that he had taken up for the purposes of his relationship with this particular human. This immediate recognition of Aziraphale’s unspoken communication, this signal of their years of knowledge and intimacy, released a rush of gratification in Aziraphale the likes of which he hadn’t known in years.

“Yes—intimate friends indeed,” said Crowley, passing his glass of champagne to his left hand that he might hold out his right to Zelda. He gave her his sharp smile. “How do you do, Ms.—?”

“Zelda,” she said, taking his hand and shaking it. “Zelda Fitzgerald. Do join us for a drink, Mr. Crowley. Any friend of Mr. Fell’s is a friend of ours, I’m sure.”

“I’d be charmed,” said Crowley, following her as she turned and walked back to their table. Aziraphale followed behind them. Crowley, he could not help but observe, still walked with that distinctive sway.

Ernest and Scott, recognizing that they had a guest, stood up as the three of them approached the table. Crowley was introduced, and they all sat back down again. The Americans all asked Crowley the usual questions that decorum required of them. Aziraphale watched, quietly, as Crowley answered all of them with a kind of charming evasiveness.

“Where are you from, Mr. Crowley?” asked Ernest.

“Oh, here and there,” replied Crowley, regarding Ernest with half-lidded eyes. He was reclined in his chair, one elbow resting on the back of his seat while the other hand swirled the champagne in his glass. “I don’t really like to be in one place for very long, but I have spent my share of time on your side of the pond, Mr. Hemingway.”

“Oh? Whereabouts?”

“Chicago.”

“Ah! That’s Ernest’s home town,” cried Scott. “You simply _must _settle our regional dispute. Zelda and I hold that there’s no place like New York, while Ernest insists…” As the conversation unfolded into a discussion of which American city was the most charming, Aziraphale quietly admired the skill with which Crowley had manipulated the conversation away from himself. It was an acquired skill and one that he often practiced himself, and witnessing it in another being washed him anew in the sense of their connection.

He was startled out of gazing at Crowley by hearing his own name.

“Mr. Fell, silent as usual on the subject of America,” Zelda was saying, with a grin. “I take it you’ve had no luck more luck with getting him to America than we have, Mr. Crowley?”

Aziraphale looked over at Crowley. Their eyes met.

“No, ah—no luck on that front,” said Crowley, slightly falteringly, as he looked into Aziraphale’s eyes. Then he looked back at Zelda, smiling widely. “Parisian crepes are the only thing you can pry Mr. Fell out of his bookshop for, eh? And, apparently, Berlin martinis.” The whole party laughed, and Aziraphale joined them, raising his glass slightly. He felt warm all over, and it was not from the alcohol.

“Fell, where have you been hiding Mr. Crowley?” asked Scott, when the laughter subsided. “You’re old friends, yes? It was _too _dull of you to not introduce such a charming companion to us for all this time.”

“Y-Yes,” said Aziraphale. “I suppose I—”

“He had good reason,” said Crowley, cutting him off. “I was a bit of an ass last time that we spoke.” His tone was matter-of-fact, and he gazed into his glass as he spoke but when he finished speaking he looked right back into Aziraphale’s eyes. The angel’s heart skipped a beat. He felt the years that they had missed pressing down on his chest, making it hard for him to breath.

“Well, my dear,” he replied, quietly. “I hardly behaved any better.”

\--

In the event, it turned out that Crowley had not yet secured his Berlin lodgings, and Ernest jovially invited him to join them at the hotel they were all staying at. Crowley agreed, and they all walked back to it together when The Lady Windermere closed. While Crowley spoke to the humans at the front desk to arrange his room, the Fitzgeralds and Ernest said their goodnights and wandered unsteadily to their separate rooms, but Aziraphale lingered uncertainly in the lobby. He sat in one of the leather armchairs, shifting in it uneasily every few seconds like it was laden with coals. When Crowley had finished arranging for a room, he turned toward the stairs, but stopped when he noticed Aziraphale. He stood still for a moment, and for its agonizing entirety Aziraphale was afraid that he would turn his back and walk away.

But he approached. He had put on sunglasses after they left the club, exceptionally round and large.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” Aziraphale replied.

After a moment’s silence, they both broke out into nervous laughter. Aziraphale felt the tension draining out of him like the sudden cessation of a cramp. He relaxed back into his chair as Crowley sat down in the one across from him. He felt light enough to float through the ceiling and lie on the air like a calm surface of water.

“It _has _been a long time,” said Crowley.

“Yes,” Aziraphale agreed. Then, all at once: “And—listen, my dear. I’ve wanted for so long to tell you that I’m sorry. I still won’t get you—what you asked for, because I just can’t stand the thought of getting you something that would—” He cut himself off. “But, regardless, I shouldn’t have spoken to you the way that I did. I said horrible things that I didn’t mean because I was angry at you. It was a dreadful lapse in self-control. And I’ve—” He cut himself off again, this time cutting his eyes away again too. The words “missed you so” would die in his throat.

When he looked back up again, Crowley was smiling wryly.

“What? What is it?” Aziraphale asked, smiling back in spite of himself.

“I beat you to it,” said Crowley, his smile widening.

“You what?”

“I beat you to apologizing.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Back in the club. I admitted—in front of all your friends, too—that I was an ass the last time that we spoke.”

“Oh, good _Lord,_” Aziraphale said, rolling his eyes, but his smile was widening.

“I beat you to it, angel, fair and square, and therefore have the moral high ground. How does it feel down there in the well of iniquity?”

“Not bad,” he said. He seemed to be in so little control of what he said, and yet he had seldom cared so little. Each moment was more delicious than the last. “Not bad at all.”

Crowley spread his hands. “There you have it, then.” He paused momentarily, turning his head to look at the hotel’s grand staircase. Then, “So, what have you been up to?”

Aziraphale thought about the twenty years where he could barely bring himself to do anything but sleep. That time had never seemed so far away.

“Oh, this and that,” he said. “Just been sort of—keeping to myself, working, that sort of thing. I met Zelda and the rest in the early 20s. Publishing and bookselling have become such a cutthroat business, you know, that one simply _has _to have connections with the authors.” He paused. “How about you?”

Crowley looked away, and then looked back. “You want God’s honest truth?”

“I suppose, but his Dark Majesty Lucifer’s would also do,” Aziraphale quipped. Crowley burst out laughing, and Aziraphale joined in. The concierge running the desk shot them an annoyed look.

“All right, all right,” Crowley gasped, when he had a breath. “Here it is: for most of it, I slept.”

“You _what?_”

“I _slept._”

Aziraphale looked at him for a beat, and then burst out laughing again—and it was a great laugh, better than he’d had in a long time, the heaving, rib-tickling, stomach-hurting kind. Crowley joined him and their laughter echoed around the arched ceilings of the hotel lobby. The concierge pursed his lips.

“For—for sixty years?” Aziraphale wheezed, finally, when he could manage it. “You _slept _for sixty years?”

Crowley removed his sunglasses briefly to wipe away his tears of mirth, giving Aziraphale another glimpse of his eyes before returning them to their shroud. “Yes,” he said. “I left London, took a place in Scotland, and just slept. Needed a break, I suppose. Didn’t like the Victorians much, anyways. When I woke up it was 1925, and Hell was _furious._ It’s been quite an ordeal trying to get back in their good books again.” He gestured around him. “That’s why I’m really here in Berlin, you know.”

“What, they sent you here?”

“No. You know those fellows going around in the brown shirts and red armbands with the funny symbol on them?”

Aziraphale’s stomach dropped like a stone. “The—the Nazis?” he said, confusedly. Aziraphale had heard of them before coming to Berlin, and seen them in the past few days they’d been in the city. Aziraphale tried his best to see the light in everyone, but it was truly impossible with that lot. He had heard the things they said—the dark, hateful, and hopeless things they spewed into the public’s ear. Crowley couldn’t _possibly _be responsible for them. That was impossible. Crowley liked to be—irritating, and sarcastic, and sometimes even cold. But Aziraphale had never seen him take something that far. Not _that _far.

Crowley seemed to recognize what he was thinking. “They’re not mine,” he said, and Aziraphale immediately relaxed, relieved. “I’m just planning to take credit for them to the bosses,” Crowley continued. “That lot, they, well—” Crowley looked away from Aziraphale, out the front window of the hotel, bringing his hand up to his mouth. “The humans have come up with some horrible, _horrible _things in their time. But I’ve got to it hand it to them. They’ve really outdone themselves with this one.” He was still looking out the window, middle three fingers of his right hand resting on his lower lip. Then he dropped his hand into his lap and sighed, looking back at Aziraphale. “At any rate, when I got wind of them, I figured that—taking credit for them would be the surest way to get Hell off my back and give me some room to breathe that would come along for the next hundred years. So I came here to watch them, gather some details to make my story credible. I’m due to report back to them in three days’ time, actually.”

Aziraphale gazed at Crowley in perturbed silence. He could see, clear as day, how hard it was for Crowley to contemplate the prospect of something like this attached to his name, regardless of whether it was true or false. He wished that he knew what to say.

“So—so you’ll be leaving Berlin, then?” he asked, finally.

“Yeah, I’m due to take the London entrance point. Got a train on Tuesday morning.”

“Ah.” Then, with studied casualness, “So…you’re living in London again, then?”

Crowley nodded. Aziraphale’s heart leapt. “And you are too, I take it? Since the bookshop’s still open.”

“Well—I’ve been spending most of my time in Paris for the past ten years or so, actually,” he said. “But—” He glanced up at the staircase that led to the rooms where the humans were all sleeping. “Well, I’ve known all of them for a rather long time now. And I quite like them. But it really has been too long. I have to start disappearing from their lives, and moving back to London seems a good way to get started on it. I think it’s going to be a bit challenging—especially with Zelda.”

Crowley tilted his head to the side. “Why’s that?”

“We’re quite good friends,” hedged Aziraphale. But Crowley continued to look at him, so Aziraphale admitted to the rest. “She’s the closest human friend I’ve ever had,” he said. “I didn’t mean to get that close to her, but—well, I was lonely. And when I found out how lonely she is, too—one thing led to another, I suppose.”

Crowley looked at him over his sunglasses, pushing his lower lip out slightly. “I’m sorry to hear that.” And he seemed to mean it.

Aziraphale shrugged. “It’s my own fault. I, ah—” he paused. “Well, anyways, I hope you’ll spend your next few days here with us?” he asked. “Have you got the information you need? We’re planning to go out to a lake outside the city tomorrow for a picnic. Ernest has got ahold of something called an ‘auto-mobile.’ Like a carriage, or rather a train—I suppose, because it runs by itself. But it doesn’t need a track. Extraordinary, don’t you think?” The words came out in a nervous rush.

Crowley smiled. “Of course,” he said. “Of course I will.”

\--

The next morning, Crowley was the first to appear in the hotel lobby, dressed rather more soberly than he had been the evening before, in a black fitted suit with a hat and tie of the same color, but he wore the same large, round sunglasses. He hoped they didn’t make him look like an insect, he thought, vaguely, adjusting the buttons of his sleeves as he waited for the others to appear. 

The second of the party to arrive was the woman with the round face and dark hair. Zelda, Crowley remembered she was called. This was the friend with whom Aziraphale said he’d have the hardest time distancing himself from. Looking at her, Crowley felt a twisting in his chest. It wasn’t jealousy, as such—but Zelda couldn’t help but serve as a reminder that while Crowley had been able to do nothing but sleep, Aziraphale had gone out into the world and done—other things, besides wallow. What he felt was not the sting of rivalry but a painful reminder of—himself, and the feelings that he had given up trying to get over long, long ago. It was an old feeling, this shame and resignation. But at least that feeling wasn’t the dark depths of what had driven him to sleep for sixty years. Crowley would get used to it again. He always did.

Glancing around the room, Zelda saw him, and approached. “Good morning, Mr. Crowley.”

“Morning,” said Crowley, giving her a two-fingered wave.

“To tell you the truth,” she said, in a suddenly conversational and conspiratorial tone, “I couldn’t care less about this picnic, but I think it’s going to be _quite _amusing to see Mr. Fell in a car.”

The demon couldn’t help but smile, remembering the awe with which Aziraphale had greeted the invention of the steam-powered train. Crowley had a car himself now—a fine black Bentley. He would show it to Aziraphale when they got back to London. He also found himself unexpectedly pleased by the conspiring tone that Zelda had taken with him on the subject of Aziraphale.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Quite amusing indeed.” Then, “Tell me, Ms. Fitzgerald—do these glasses make me look like an insect?”

Her face became suspiciously expressionless. “No! No, not at all.”

_Damn, _Crowley thought. He’d have to get a new pair. Maybe he’d gift these to Beelzebub.

“And, please,” the young lady continued, “Call me Zelda.”

Crowley smiled again. “All right, then, Zelda.”

Suddenly, hearing Aziraphale’s voice, Crowley turned his head and saw him descending the stairs with Scott and Ernest. It was him—it was really him. Part of Crowley had still been having a hard time believing it.

Now that everyone had arrived, they departed for the picnic. Ernest was driving, with Scott sitting beside him in the front, while Aziraphale, Zelda, and Crowley took the back seat. It was a pale yellow convertible with seats of brown leather. Not bad, Crowley admitted, but nevertheless unable to hold a candle to his Bentley. Meanwhile, Aziraphale was nervous.

“What, there’s going to be no _roof? _Why are you taking down the roof?” he had demanded of Ernest. “We’re just going to be—out there, going thirty miles an hour, with our heads unprotected?”

Scott laughed and gave him a hearty slap on the back, causing Aziraphale to double over slightly. “Don’t worry, Mr. Fell! It’s perfectly safe.”

Aziraphale hadn’t seemed convinced. Now he clung to the picnic basket with his left hand and the side of the car with his right, white-knuckled in both. He kept murmuring to himself, “Extraordinary! Quite extraordinary!”

Crowley bit back a smile. More than once he exchanged amused glances with Zelda.

Aziraphale’s nerves notwithstanding, they arrived at the scenic lake and began their picnic without a hitch—that is, until they began to unpack the basket.

“I say, Fell, I thought I asked you to bring the Tennessee Honey,” said Scott, looking at Aziraphale crossly.

“Oh, yes! I…must have forgotten,” said Aziraphale, looking away and out over the lake with studied casualness.

_Still a terrible liar, _Crowley thought to himself.

“Well, no matter,” said Ernest. “There’s a liquor store nearby. We can go get some.”

“Ah—indeed. Perhaps we might get some red wine, instead? It’s rather early in the day for whiskey, isn’t it?” continued Aziraphale, in a tone of persistent pleasantness.

“Oh, please, Mr. Fell, don’t start. As if we all didn’t see you go through a solid seven martinis last night,” said Zelda, looking at him in annoyance.

“Well, my _dear, _you know as well as I do that I don’t make a _habit _out of that kind of thing, and _habits _that are harmful in the long term ought to be broken, don’t you think?” said Aziraphale, without missing a beat.

Meanwhile, Scott had stood up. “I’m going to the store. Come along, Ernest.”

“I’m coming as well!” declared Aziraphale, standing up in a flurry and puttering after them.

Crowley and Zelda watched the three backs as they receded.

“Poor fellow,” said Zelda. “It really _does_ sadden him how we all drink. But I don’t know why he continues to fight such an uphill battle.”

Crowley shrugged, watching as Aziraphale and the others disappeared around the corner of a block. He was thinking about Aziraphale’s indignant refusal of his request for holy water. _I’m not bringing you a suicide pill, Crowley! _

“I suppose that’s what you do, when you care about someone,” he said, turning back to look at Zelda. “Look out for them, even if they can’t do it themselves.”

Zelda’s lips twitched into a small smile. “I suppose,” she said.

“Has he been all right?” Crowley found himself asking, before he could stop himself.

“What? Who do you mean?” asked Zelda, drawing her eyebrows together in confusion.

“Az—Mr. Fell,” said Crowley. His chest felt tight, but he forced himself to speak evenly. “Has he been—well, all right? For the time that you’ve known him? Nothing bad has happened to him? He wasn’t, you know—” Crowley gestured vaguely. “Hit by the first car that was invented, or anything like that?”

Zelda laughed. “No! No. He’s been fine—perfectly safe and in good health, if that’s what you’re asking about.” She paused, looking down at her hands for a moment and biting her lip, before looking back up at Crowley. “Although—I must say. I’ve never in all these years seen him as happy as he’s been since we ran into you last night.”

Crowley tilted his head to one side, fighting to remain expressionless.

“Yes,” Zelda continued. “He’s a lovely man. He’s always been warm and caring, treated us all like the children he never had. We all depend on him more than we’d ever admit. And no one can match him for cheerfulness. But—” She paused to think. “I always got the sense that he had some kind of deep sadness, hidden where none of us could see or understand it. I’ve tried to ask him about it on a few occasions, but he’s never been forthcoming.” She shrugged. “I respect his desire for privacy, I suppose, but I’ve always been rather frustrated that he does things like—like—” She gestured around her vaguely. “—getting after us all for drinking, when there was clearly something that was eating him away on the inside, killing him slowly, and he wouldn’t do so much as _talk _about it.”

Crowley’s breath hitched.

“But now,” continued Zelda, looking back up at Crowley. “It’s gone. That sense of desperate sadness—since last night, it’s all gone.” She looked at him steadily. “I don’t know who you are, Mr. Crowley, but I’m damn glad that you’ve arrived—and clearly, Mr. Fell is, too.”

Crowley was blinking rapidly, but he managed to keep up an even and ironic tone of voice. “Oh, Zelda—don’t tell me _that_.”

“Why not, Mr. Crowley?”

Crowley looked away from her, just in time to see Aziraphale rounding the corner behind Ernest and Scott. They were each carrying bottles of dark liquor, and Aziraphale was walking behind them, holding a bottle of red wine and looking put out.

“Because you’ll give me hope.”


End file.
